My Little
Loves (French: Mes Petites Amoureuses) is a French drama
film written and directed by Jean Eustache, his second
and last feature. It was released in 1974 and stars
Martin Loeb as an adolescent boy shunted from a tranquil
lifestyle at his grandmother''s rural abode to his
mother''s cramped apartment in the city. Ingrid Caven
plays the boy''s mother. The film''s running time is 123
minutes, more than an hour less than that of Eustache''s
earlier feature La Maman et la Putain. The film was
entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival.

A study of minor events in the adolescence of a boy
growing up in small towns. Daniel lives with his
grandmother and, after one year of high school, has to
go to live with his mother in the south of France. She
is a seamstress living in a tiny apartment with her
lover Jose, a Spanish farm worker. Daniel would like to
continue school, but his mother cannot afford it, so she
sends him to work as an apprentice in a moped repair
shop. Daniel wiles away his time in the shop, and learns
about girls from the other boys in town. When he returns
to visit his grandmother next year, it is obvious that
he has grown up faster than his old friends.

A sweet and different outlook on life and film-making
Author: Mark Stewart
This was my first introduction to Jean Eustache''s work
(during a retrospective at a local film fest) and I
didnt really know what to expect. Having seen 12 films
in the past 4 days, and lining up an old French film
that was over 2 hours, I was prepared to fight to stay
awake. I must say I was more than pleasantly surprised
to find myself getting caught up in this charming tale
of a boy''s youth in France. In some ways, the lack of a
distinct plot adds to the charm of the film, as a series
of vignettes strung together give the real feeling of a
slice of life. The gaucheness of the boy, especially
towards girls, had the entire audience squirming in
their seats at times, but out of sympathy for the lad,
who I would rate as the character I have connected most
with emotionally in recent time.

The way that women are depicted in the film is certainly
dated when we look back on it now, however in some ways
this works well, as we are never really privy to how
these women think just as Daniel is not (it is very
interesting that we do not learn his name until very
much near the end, and I for one did not realise I hadnt
known it). Beautifully and lovingly shot, very well
acted indeed, this is a feelgood film without being
sappy, Amelie without the surrealism.

Charming but Uncomfortable
7/10
Author: arenn (arenn@urbanophile.com) from Evanston,
Illinois USA
13 January 2001
My Little Loves is a charming and at times troubling
semi-autobiographical film detailing a year in the life
of a stand-in for Eustache in the south of France.
During the course of the film, we see him transformed
from a bright but somewhat shy rural boy to a blossoming
teenage hoodlum in a larger town. Ripped away from the
comfort of his grandmother''s home in the country, he
finds himself sleeping on a cot in his mother''s one room
flat in town and working as a mechanic instead of
attending high school. There is plenty of time for
drifting, and he falls in with an older crowd of
delinquents at a local cafe, much of whose activities
revolve around groping girls and searching for that
elusive score.

The molestation of women might be offputting to some.
But it is supposed to be somewhat offputting. Becoming
an adolescent is a painful process in the best of times,
and Eustache''s young self has more than his fair shares
of troubles. He can''t relate to women except in the most
base sense of groping them. This essential failure is a
metaphor for all of his youthful inabilities to cope.
And despite what we might think of some of his
behaviors, we certainly empathize with him. Especially
any guy who is old enough to have gone through this
experience will. The only weakness here is perhaps a bit
of excessive audience manipulation to evoke sympathy for
him, through bludgeoning us with his being yanked from
school despite being a very bright student and the like.
Still, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.